In Ac 21^ reference is made to four members of the Church at Jerusalem who had a vow upon them. St. Paul had just returned from his third journey, and disquieting rumours had preceded him to Jerusalem. It was reported that he was teaching all the Jews of the Dispersion ' to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs' (Ac 21-'). Grave oft'ence was thereby being given to the Jewish Christians, who were all ' zealous for the law.' Accordingly, James and the elders urged the Apostle to seize the opportunity of vindicating his character which circumstances offered. By purifying himself with the men who had the vow, and by bearing the expenses incidental to its due completion, he would be able to prove that he had not abandoned the ancient custom of his nation.
There is nothing distinctively Christian about such vows as these. Indeed, the whole point of the course urged upon St. Paul lay in the fact that the vow was a purely Jewish custom, which would be completed in the Temple by a purely Jewish rite.
Such vows are not uncommon in the OT : e.g. the detailed expositi(m of the vow of the Nazirite in Nu 6'"-- (the LXX here translates the Hebrew word Tjj, which is rendered ' vow ' in the EV, by ei'x^)- They consist of an obligation, commonly self-imposed, to observe some special form of cere- monial purity for some specified time. The dura
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tion of the vow was maikeil by allo\vin<; tlie hair of the liead to grow freely, its ex|iirution by triiii- luiiij; the hair in the normal manner, ami liy the oH'cring of certain special sacriliies. The vow of n Nazirite might be for life, as in the ease of Samson (Jg 13'), or might even inihule an entire elan for several generations, as in the case of the Keehahites (Jer 35'^ "). The terms of St. Paul's own vow are unknown ; but it is to be noted that it was termin- ated at a distance from Jerusalem, and therefore without sacrilices. As his departure from CenchreiL" was virtual!}- the end of the evangelistic work of his second journey, he may have considered that his vow expired automatically at that point. Or he may have terminated it in view of the impo.-isi- bility of maintaining on shipboard the conditions which it imposed.
The only other passage in the NT in which the word eOxv occurs is Ja 5^° ('the prayer of faith' [EVJ). The idea of a vow may be present here, but is certainly not prominent, evxv is used once in what may be called the technical sense by Clement of llonie {ad Cor. I. .\li. 1). J. B. Light- foot (Apoatulic Fathers, pt. i. vol. ii., London, 1S90, p. 292) translates 6v<riai cvxCiy by 'free-will ollerings,' i.e. otierings made in discharge of vows which have been voluntarily undertaken.
The NT gives us one example of a vow of a rather dill'erent kind. In Ac 23'^'- we read that more than forty of the Jews bound themselves with a curse {avfOt/xaTha/ifi' iavrovs) not to eat or drink until they had killed St. Paul.
AVe see, tlierelore, that to a Jew a vow was an obligation of a religious, or semi-religious, char- acter, incurred for some definite, specified time. Publicity was of its essence, for « hile it lasted the person who was under it was distinguished by un- mistakable outward signs. And the expiration of the vow was, as a rule, marked by special sacri-
fices in the Temiile. The word tvx^ is not used by Ignatius or I'olycarp in this sense, liut in Ignatius' Epixllc to I'oliinirp (5) there is a reference to vows of celibacy: 'If any one is able to abiile in chastity to the lionour of the tlesli of the Lord, let him so abide without boasting. If he boast he is lost ; and if it he known beyond the bishop, he is polluted." Here we have for the first time a type of vow which is distinctly Christian and diU'ers in certain important respects from its Jewish i>rcdecessors. (1) It is a vow of celibacy. Amongst .lews, to whom the continuance of the holy nation was a matter of supreme iniportaiue, abstinence from marriage was virtually unknown. The idea that the celibate is in itself higher than the married life was altogether alien from .Jewish thought. Tlie development of Christian thought on this point behmgs to a later period of Chunh history and therefore lies outside the scope of this article. For an illustration of the tendency we may compare the interpolated passages in Ignatius' Eputlc to the Philndclphianjs (see Lightfoot, Apos- tolic Fathers, pt. ii. vol. iii.^ London, 1880, p. 209) with St. Paul's teaching (1 Co 7). (2) It is a vow for life. (3) Its value consists in its privacy. The Christian who has taken such vows is not to be distinguished outwardly in any way. Ho is not to wear any distinctive dress or to withdraw from the ordinary concerns of life. He is to recogni/e that his |)rincipal danger is pride, and, though celibate in fact, must not let it be known tliat he is celibate in principle. Thus, though we have here the germ of the idea which bore fruit in the mon- asticism of later ages, we are still a long way from the 'monastic profession' with its distinctive ex- ternals and narrow delimitation of ' the religious life.' R. H. Malden.